the Senate adopts a text to recognize France’s “responsibility”

A first validation step. On Wednesday, November 22, the Senate adopted a bill aimed at recognizing the “responsibility” of the French State in the convictions of people for homosexuality between 1945 and 1982 on the basis of old discriminatory laws.

This text from the socialist group, whose “principle” was supported by the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, was adopted unanimously by the upper house. The senatorial majority of the right and the center nevertheless rejected the provisions aimed at providing “repair” financial to people convicted of homosexuality over this period.

The “compensation” aspect rejected

The text voted on in the Senate establishes that “the French Republic recognizes its responsibility” in the application of laws having constituted “discrimination based on sexual orientation” until 1982.

Two articles of the penal code introduced under the Vichy regime are targeted, one establishing a specific age of consent for homosexual relations and the other worsening the repression of public outrage of modesty committed by two people of the same sex. Writing the text allows you to “recognize” that these provisions “were sources of suffering and trauma for those convicted. ” The blind “compensation” the text was nevertheless rejected at the initiative of the right and the center, the majority in the Senate, due in particular to legal difficulties relating to prescription.

Even if it is difficult to quantify the victims of these old laws, the Minister of Justice estimated, on the basis of research, that “more than 10,000 people” were concerned between 1945 and 1982, with a prison sentence for 90% of them. To prosper in Parliament, the text must now be included on the agenda of the National Assembly, with a view to a final adoption.